Fish & wildlife Success stories Upper Salmon

Success stories — Upper Salmon River Basin Watershed Restoration

In the upper Salmon River Basin of Idaho, the Idaho Soil Conservation Commission and the Custer and Lemhi county soil and water conservation districts are working to improve fish habitat and fish survival.

A group of related projects is financed by the Bonneville Power Administration through the Power Planning Council's Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program. The effort is coordinated by a local advisory committee representing private, state, federal, tribal and local land managers and other interests, with a technical scientific team assisting in the prioritization of on-the-ground projects.

The Upper Salmon Basin Watershed Project is the largest collaborative effort to restore salmon habitat on non-federal lands in Idaho. The project covers four hydrologic units that include the Lemhi, Upper Salmon, Pahsimeroi and Middle-Salmon Panther Creek watersheds. The project is coordinated through the Idaho Soil Conservation Commission, with the Lemhi and Custer Soil and Water Conservation Districts doing most of the direct work with private landowners. The program has resulted in habitat restoration projects in areas where such activities previously had been quite limited.

The work began in 1993. Since then, a number of projects have been completed. Two primary types of projects are illustrated in the photos above. Fences have been built along riparian areas of fish-bearing streams. These encourage vegetation growth, which in turn stabilizes the streambanks and reduces erosion. Riparian vegetation attracts insects that fish eat, and also helps shade and cool the water. Reduced erosion helps keep the gravel clean in areas where fish spawn. Another primary type of project involves rebuilding and repairing irrigation intakes, where rotating screens keep juvenile fish from being swept into irrigation canals. The screens divert fish back into the main stream.

These projects, and others like them, have been completed under the auspices of the Model Watershed Project, which was established in 1992. The Model Watershed Project covers 2,640 square miles of the Lemhi River, Pahsimeroi River and East Fork tributaries of the upper Salmon River.

The goal of the project is to improve anadromous fish habitat in specific local river reaches and also to improve overall aquatic health by:

1. improving scientific methodology to identify problems and solutions
2. reducing the amount of fine sediments in the spawning gravel
3. reducing the number of physical barriers to fish migration
4. restoring natural ecological functions to enhance river channels
5. increasing riparian vegetation adjacent to channels
6. providing adequate water flows for migration, spawning and rearing of fish.

The project also seeks to increase the number, density and composition of fish species in the rivers and increase the use of habitat by multiple fish species.